In the field of laser remote sensing and imaging, an object is typically radiated with a laser source, and the reflected light intensity is measured to determine the characteristics of the object. Typically, the object is spatially scanned with a narrow laser beam, and the intensity of the reflected beam is measured as a function of beam location. Alternatively, the object can be flood illuminated with laser light and the image can be recorded by using a detector array with a conventional lens in a manner analogous to flash photography.
One method for performing image detection requires serially illuminating an object with the desired laser frequencies or other discriminants and recording the data with a detector as a sequence of frames. One difficulty in performing serial detection in realistic conditions is that slight object motion, on the order of the wavelength of light, can introduce phase decorrelation in the data that complicates subsequent processing or makes such processing impossible. Systems designers are forced to consider custom detectors with high-frame rates or high pixel rates; however, technological limitations make this difficult. Such custom detectors and the imaging systems that use them are complex, costly to manufacture, and often have very limited applications for which they are useful.